Hedonopia...can be achieved.

And no one is speaking of any drug that numbs us. We are speaking of chemical evolution, not psychological anesthesia.

The problems WILL be solved, only without the mental stress. Today we have mood stabilizers. This doesn't REMOVE the problem, neither does it HANDICAP us from solving it. It merely insures that we do it positively.

This is only the tip of the iceberg. We are not talking mind numbing, we are talking chemical CHANGE, evolution in the future of eliminating mental suffering as a needless concept, much as we have done for physical suffering (which at one time was considered "needed").

 

A chemical that affects the function of the body, is more or less the definition of a drug. If this happens naturally great but I cant imagine the body is going to naturally evolve into a state that leaves it unable to detect pain, I for one would be dead long ago. Im pretty sure if the problem goes away the pain will soon follow, particularly with physical pain and I guess the most accute mental pains, stress comes to mind.

Other pains such as guilt, regret and general emotional baggage is really the pain of a memory. Which raises the obvious question of can you remove the pain without removing the memory? I dont know if this question has been answered, but as far as im aware it hasnt, certianly given the stage of brain scanning technology I cant imagine for a minute it has. We can certainly numb the pain by supressing the memory, the people who use the needles that litter the canal near here are a testament to that. Though a few days of detox and everything would come flooding back.

Which brings us back to the original question can the pain be removed without removing the memory. My personaly belief is no as it only hurts when the memory is in my mind which to me suggests that the memory is stored, the pain is a dynamic effect that only occurs at recollection. Lets assume hypthetically that it can you then have a bad memory without the associated pain, is this memory still bad? Or does it become neutral? If it becomes a neutral memory does it still prevent us making the same mistakes twice? If it turns out the memory and the associated emotion are deeply intertwined then do we erase our bad memories?

 

i get it. though it's not the path that i would root for.

i'd just like to point something out - if i'm right... i don't think libertine is talking about actually numbing your nervious system... it sounds more like he's only speaking of mental (emotional) pain. i've reacted quickly to physical harm without any sort of negative emotion before. slivers, burns, whatever (i love the endorphins after badly twisting my ankle but i know not to walk on it, no matter how good it feels). i can totally see it as a possibility.

i also think he's talking about more advanced or "mature" humans (if we ever allow ourselves to get there). not us today.

however, i think i've seen a star trek episode that went like this theory and i'm pretty sure the species got destoryed or needed help or something...


oh and one more thing, "pain" is relitive.

 

You are parallel with what I am getting at, yes.

 

Libertine has a PROFOUND and Prophetic point!!!

ELIMINATE, even for a single generation with the use of drug therepies, the repressed fears and insecurities within our psyche, and the entire repressed psycho-dynamic of civilization with all the dangerous mass psychosis of its collective delusions and denials will disapear.

Our psycho-pathologies are NOT one-in-the-same as physical pain!

They are the psycho-dynamic result of our repressed fears and insecurities.

Fears and insecurities that are responses to environmental stimuli that threaten our survival and reproduction.

Moreover, our fears and insecurities are repressed through the mass psychosis of denial and delusion.

Our current psycho-dynamic is a continuing response to an environmental stimuli that happened many thousands of years ago.

Yet once psychosis is established, it generates a self-perpetuating momentum long after the initial deadly impact of the original environmental stimuli.

Stop the self-perpetuating momentum of repressed civilization through drug therepies, and its back to Eden!

And we can remain in our new unrepressed existential State of Wholistic Being until the next massive climate-shift produces yet again another environmental stimuli that threatens our survival and reproduction.

That's the positive potential of the new drug therapies that the science of neuro-cognitive psychology is NOW in the midst of developing.

The Negative potential is that anything created within our current psycho-dynamic of reression and its mass psychosis can be dangerously perverted.

 

You know what's missing from that whole formula? Empathy, or the ability of it.

 

Wasn't A. Huxley envisioning just such a future when he wrote BNW?

 

Empathy is a hollow word when spoken in the hyper-competitive hierarchy of civilized man.

Such alienated men, who objectify every relationship and every experience, are dead even to the most subjective experience of our own skins.

You want true empathy and not just shallow self-absorbed sentimentalism, then you better prey for a miracle drug that cures our irrational and neurotic fears and insecurities.

Then we can truely reach out and truely speak of empathy.

Huxley's vision was still trapped by hierarchical motivations.

Huxley failed to realize that his entire hierarchy and all of its hierarchical manipulations would vanish without the neurotic impulses of our fear-driven social repression.

The crude drug therepies and behavioral modifications described by Huxley didn't give them back their individuality, because they were intentionally designed to maintain an anal-retentive hierarchical control.

 

The massive resources necessary to develop such technologies must come from those in a position to combine those recourses. leaving a governing body in the position to alter its population.

Of course they will start out subtlety, make your kids smarter stronger faster better, and few will refuse them, driven by ego. But why stop there? No need for psychotic behavior in our new eden, not when we can fix it in a snap, and what children we will have, well behaved and attentive, never any horse play in class, that was for us primitives.

products of the machine, designed by machine to feed the machine

 

You make our new 'Eden' as you put it, sound as if it would be populated by bugs.
So, you are proposing making us all that way? As a good thing? Emotionless, unable to feel emotional pain?

 

Without the elite suffering emotional pain, do you think they would be able to empathize for anyone not on the 'brilliant' new therapy?

 

im not sure if you missed the sracasm and directed this at me, but, Its not a mater of what is good or bad but what they WILL do
you have to relieze that those who are altered will be the future hiearchy, and being altered themselves, they will not have near the reluctence to alter the next generation and so forth and so on down the line of generations, untill we are nothing but small bigeyed, hairless creature who's only emotion is curiosity.
feeding a machine

 

Still no one has addressed what is linked with the pain. How much of our learning, character and personality would be lost if the pain were removed? This entire thread is assuming that we can remove the pain and nothing else will be affected, rather like the mental version of an appendectomy. I would not be the least bit suprised if is acutally turend out to be the mental version of having your lungs or kidneys removed. Science has no answer ot this question, or at least not that I could find.

 

One day the primitive thinkers here will be laughed at.

But, only in passing thought as humankind will wonder why we created a "use" for such uselessness as psychological suffering.

But, leave it to the religious and moralists to continue to cry about how much we "need" it to be "human".

 

Im not really a moralist and im definately not hugely religious or at least not in the way you mean. Im just a primitive thinker whos waiting for a pubmed reference to back up what your saying about psychological pain. I will gladly admit that the raw emotion can be removed without damaging the person, I humbly request that you supply a reference as my mind is too primitive.

 

I did.

My first post is a reference to check out.

 

"What's So Bad About Feeling Good"


Was the name of a movie in the '60s; a comedy about a little multi-colored tropical toucan who lands in New York City carrying a virus.

Transmitted to a person, the virus allowed one for the first time to experience the beauty and spontaneous joy of life beyond our repressed fears and insecurities of the last 500 generations.

Contagious, the virus quickly spreads to people all across New York City, and from a city of mindless fear, anger, violence, greed, ugly and joyless frustration, to a city of love, happiness, kindness, dancing in the streets, and connection to the living energy of nature.

But this was a direct threat to the corporate military industrial hierarchy of civilization.

They reacted by mobilizing massive resourses necessary to stop the spread of this virus and to find an anecdote to turn those infected back to their normal everyday state.

I won't tell you if they succeeded, but, though it's been thirty-five years since I've seen this movie, its vision has remained in my mind ever since.

It takes no more resources than a single lab in a single wherehouse to develop and distribute little pills.

But it takes the massive resources of our repressed System to out-law and declare war on psycho-active drugs.

Massive resources to criminalize and hunt-down those who would dare to be free of the irrational fears and insecurities perpetuated to maintain The System.

 

For a start there was not a single reference which makes it hard for me to follow up but my knowledge of biochemistry is fairly superficial anyway then so is the document. You also talked about nanotechnology but it didnt really mention that which is a shame as its something I could get my teeth into. My main concern is still that this whole process assumes you can removing the unpleasant feeling of pain without removing the rest of an experience. I still have not been able to find a paper solving this, I ask tomorrow but I suspect for a very good reason. Though to me its all irrelevant as I do not think that pain is in any way primitive, happiness is a primitive emotion as well.

I dont find the general philosphy that inspiring either it doesnt strike me as a particularly high minded ideal. Still seems to me like a futuristic version of getting pissed to run away for your problems, I dont see the subtle distinction between running away and erasing. I do not want to look back on the worst moments of my life with a grin like a cheshire cat even if i have used some futuristic technology instead of morphene to get there. Im not particularly religious but that doesnt detract from the fact we have up to about a century on this rock and I dont think its primitive to want to take your problems and deal with them coming out the otherside of a rough patch knowing you solved it is a very rewarding experience. I have no doubt treatment will be there for if it gets too much but I still think that forcibly removing part of a person should not be a default, nothing I read changed my mind, though i did comfort me slightly in that it convinced me its not a problem ill have to face in my lifetime.

 

so what the hells a moralist?

 

Indeed, the main threat to Hedonopia is the "antiquated" SYSTEM and the greedy dinosaurs who run it. Those who place ancient superstitions and myth before SCIENCE and progress.